This PDA-like device was developed through the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for use in Afghanistan and Iraq by American soldiers for communicating with locals who spoke Farsi, Dari, Pashto and other languages. It is now being used by police departments in California, Florida, Nevada, to help with non-English speakers.

Standard police commands are translated and loaded into the unit by bilingual police officers, then retrieved and broadcast by a simple English-language text or voice word search.